Developing Adoption Support and Therapy

Angie Hart is the adoptive parent of three children. She is a principal lecturer in the Faculty of Health at the University of Brighton and a therapist working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Southdowns Health NHS Trust, Brighton. She is a tutor on professional courses for health practitioners, and undertakes research on health and social care. Barry Luckock is a qualified social worker and teacher who lectures in social work and social policy in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. He specialises in child welfare policy and practice.

• 1. Adoption Today. 2. Understanding Adoptive Childhood and Family Life: Family Practices and Narratives as the Context for Adoption Support. 3. Adoption Support: The Legal and Organisational Framework for Practice. 4. `Someone There For Us': The Adoption Support Services Advisor in Context. 5. Facilitating `Good Enough' Adoptive Parenting Through Formal Therapeutic Interventions. 6. `Holding Multiple Families in Mind': Enabling Open Communication and Adoptive Kinship. 7. Developing Communities of Adoptive Practice. References. Index.

This is a much-needed book about the supports that are essential to adoptive families, especially those raising children who are placed at an older age out of the public systems... This book has good and clear directives for many of the people working with the family. It is a well thought-out approach, and covers a great deal of what is needed to provide the best services to the adoptive parents... Ms. Hart and Mr. Luckock have given us a gem of an instruction book for child welfare workers all over... The authors have presented us with a comprehensive, and sometimes hands-on book that will make a world of difference in the training of professionals who work with adoptive families and I would recommend that adoptive parents and families read this book as well to understand how the professionals are thinking about them, and what they are calculating as their needs.